a dialogue with a friend

This is a collaboration between George Angel and myself.  

A narrative and a study of inspiration. 

my image, his words

  "It was particularly before a storm that the legend of Jack Nimble seemed to linger in a small coastal village founded by Dutch immigrants just north of Davenport along the rocky cliffs. Presumably a tall, lanky youth with sad sleepless eyes, he would sour milk, tangle little girls’ hair, and frighten livestock off cliffs; all without ever being seen. He would burn your house down because a wedge of cheese you had in your cupboard enticed him. Bells rattled without ringing whenever he passed. He had only ever been perceived in the shadows, and then more as a kind of flicker than as the silhouette of a figure. Children could be rid of him by simply opening a window wherever they were. Jack shared the mirror of every pond and puddle with his brother Quick, each from his own side, each yearning to drown in the other by hurling himself at him. Jack made trees bloom wildly and left tobacco stains on shirt cuffs. Jack Nimble was alleged to help sailors’ sons remember their fathers, and he was said to enjoy making young women drowsy. The food was always salty wherever he decided to take up lodging. Some of the children had wooden dolls in his likeness, always with one leg stretched out horizontally before him, as if he were about to push off and unlatch from the face of the world."

his words, my image

Aperture

Stolen for a clapper,

The fence slat left an absence,

A summer’s long shutter.

The first rung of the latter

Was a teeter-totter in a yard.

Tintinnabulation from a sprinkler,

Squeezed pungent of all its green shade

By the leaf prickle of loose-legged drowsing,

Within which a radiant stain pulses darkly behind bone,

Inclines to polish its has to say,

Purpling across night’s brass murmurs.

                        --George Angel

George Angel is an author, play-write, artist and musician.   For bio and published works of George Angel please visit Poetry International

George's book, The Fifth Season is available at Amazon and I highly recommend it.  

Thanks George.